


At the Broken Places

by savages (cannedpeaches)



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mentions of Suicide, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 18:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6765214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannedpeaches/pseuds/savages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after leaving Jackson, Ellie has returned, and neither she nor Joel can ever be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Broken Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CatrionaMac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatrionaMac/gifts), [Luciferine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luciferine/gifts).



> Yep, this is happening. Been sitting on it for a while. Also made a [fanmix](https://play.spotify.com/user/doublexstrike/playlist/4BwhFr3JeDKsSnQDABXijl), in four parts, to go with it (Ellie finding out Joel lied, Joel after Ellie leaves, Ellie in the five-year interim, Ellie's return).
> 
> Dedicated to [CatrionaMac](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CatrionaMac/pseuds/CatrionaMac) and [Luciferine](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Luciferine/pseuds/Luciferine), two amazing writers of this ship whose work made me brave enough to write and post this.
> 
> Many more author's notes at the end!

_The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places._

_—Ernest Hemingway_

* * *

 

She returned in the spring, almost five years to the day she’d left.

Joel had been on duty on the wall, and later, he would feel the hot rush of guilt that he hadn’t recognized her right away. She was taller now; her frame had filled out, hips and breasts and lean muscle, although she was still far too skinny; she was laden with guns; but what threw him most of all was that she’d cut her hair short – it looked like it had all been shaved off at some point, and it was still close-cropped to her head. No, Joel hadn’t recognized her, was about to train his rifle on her as she walked right up to the gate, slowly, her hands in the air.

Then she spoke.

He’d have recognized that voice anywhere.

“My name is Ellie Williams,” she said. “I’m looking for Tommy Miller.”

“How d'you know Tommy?” Earl called down to her, his own gun raised. Joel, for his part, had ducked down behind the wall of the watchtower, clutching his gun to his chest. Hiding like the coward he was.

“I knew his brother,” Ellie said. “I traveled with him when I was younger.”

“You’re that little girl,” someone else called. “Earl, get Tommy on the radio.”

Ellie waited outside the gate while Tommy made his way over. Or at least, Joel assumed she was waiting; he was still hiding, still sweating bullets, breathing hard. His fellow sentries kept casting him odd looks, but that was pretty usual for Joel; no one tried to ask him about Ellie. He was too unpredictable in moments like these, and after five years in Jackson, everyone knew it. He hadn’t been the same since she’d left. No one knew what to do now that she’d returned, least of all Joel.

It might have been fifteen minutes, it might have been an hour, it might have been a year – decades seemed to pass before Joel heard Tommy’s voice demanding that the sentries open the gate.

“Goddamn,” Tommy said, far below Joel, “it really is you.”

“Tommy,” Ellie greeted him.

Several moments passed; Joel could only fill in the blanks, but knowing his brother, he was engulfing Ellie in a hug.

“Am I glad to see you,” Tommy continued. “We didn’t know if you were – what had happened to you.”

“There’s a lot to tell,” Ellie said, and there was a hint of something in her voice – guilt, embarrassment, remorse, Joel couldn’t tell. Then she said, “Where’s – I mean, is –”

“He’s here,” Tommy said. “He’s alive. Somewhere…”

Joel was already sneaking down a ladder off to the side. When he reached the ground, he raced home, his heart pounding in his mouth to the sound of her name:

_Ellie. Ellie. Ellie._

 

Through the kitchen window, Joel watched the sun dip in the sky, darkening to bright orange before it slipped below the horizon and everything outside went dark.

Somewhere, a clock ticked.

Somewhere, an owl hooted.

Somewhere, Ellie was talking to Tommy and Maria.

Because she was here. Because she was alive. Because she had come back.

When he’d gotten home, he’d thrown himself onto his couch, tossed his rifle on the floor, and wrapped his arms around his body. He hadn’t been able to stop shaking, and even now, small tremors rolled through him, making him feel both sick and alive, as he hadn’t felt since she’d gone.

He saw it every night in his dreams:

There was always a girl, either blonde or red-headed, in his arms either passed out or crying, either bleeding out or wonderfully, mercifully whole. The girl always left him, the light gone from her eyes, or her back turned on him, walking down the road that led away from Jackson, away from him. He always tried to reach out to her, always tried to clutch her more tightly, but she always turned to smoke, dissipating into the air. Like she’d never existed.

But his girls, they’d always existed. They lived with him. He could never stop carrying them.

And they weighed him down, the two of them together too much for him to bear. When Sarah had died, he’d thrown himself into killing, into smuggling. When Ellie left, he tried to put all of himself into guarding Jackson, farming its fields, renovating its houses, but he’d been stretched too far. He could take only so much.

He hadn’t sleepwalked in a long time now, but in those first months he’d done it enough – showing up in people’s homes, holding guns to their heads, demanding they return Ellie – that people stayed far away from him. Even Tommy and Maria had grown distant, as much as they tried to take care of him. It was a miracle he was allowed to keep his guns at all.

But that weight didn’t shift when he saw her, like he often thought it would. If she were alive. If she hadn’t been killed, or worse, gone back to –

No, he was different now. And if her appearance was any indication, Ellie was different, too.

 

She didn’t knock at his door until the moon was high in the sky, but she did knock. Just as he knew she was bound to.

The sound was hesitant and light, and if he hadn’t been listening for it, he might have missed it. He unfolded himself from the couch, joints creaking and muscles protesting after so many hours in the same position, and cracked the door open.

Her face was pale in the moonlight, and it looked all the rounder for her hair being so short. Her cheekbones stuck out prominently; the baby fat she’d had as a girl was gone. Her eye sockets were hollow, and even her bright green eyes seemed dulled by whatever she had gone through in the five years she’d been away. She was wearing a tank top, her pack and her guns on her back, her right forearm wrapped in a bandana.

For a moment, she almost looked like Tess.

But then she quirked a small, nervous smile with her full lips, and she was a girl again. When she spoke, she was a woman. Familiar and strange.

“Hi,” she said. She sounded hoarse, exhausted.

Joel just stared at her. It had been so long.

“Tommy offered to let me stay at his place, but I wanted to see you…” She bit her lip, shifting her weight from foot to foot. All that pent-up energy – that was the same.

Joel gave her a nod and opened the door wider, stepping back to let her enter. She slid her things off her shoulders, dropping them softly to the floor as Joel closed the door behind her.

“It looks the same,” she said conversationally.

Joel wanted a million things – to hug her, hit her, scream at her, ask her all the questions she hadn’t answered – all of it battling inside him, rendering him mute and motionless.

Finally, he boiled everything roiling in him down to a single word:

“Why?”

Ellie turned to look at him. She looked like a knife. She looked like glass. Joel’s heart broke, again and again, pieces scattering within his ribs.

“I had to,” she said simply. Her fingers tangled themselves into a knot as she spoke, straining against each other as she struggled to find the words. “I had to,” she said again, looking at her hands, the floor.

Joel’s fingers twitched; he had to keep himself from taking her by the shoulders and shaking her.

“Do you have any idea…?” His right hand balled into a fist, which he pushed against his mouth as a sob threatened to escape him. His eyes burned.

She took a slow step toward him, then another. He mashed his knuckles hard against his lips, his teeth, watching her, shaking. She approached him like she would a wild dog, careful, watchful. When she stood directly in front of him, she put one dry calloused hand on his cheek.

“Joel,” she murmured. Her eyes were wet.

The dam inside him broke. She slid to the floor with him as he knees gave out from under him, held him tight against her chest as he sobbed.

 

He was spent, floppy in her arms, the violence of his tears replaced by an exhausted quiet. They lay on the floor, Joel’s head pillowed on her chest; there was no energy for anything else. He felt empty, like he’d been full of tears and now that they were gone, there was nothing left in him.

He felt more than heard her voice as she began to speak:

“I know you lied.” Joel stiffened against her body; that much he could gather. “I didn’t understand why, though. Just that – the person I trusted most in the world had lied to me. And I didn’t know why. I felt so – so _alone_. So I left. I had to leave.”

He flinched as he felt her thread her fingers through his hair, running her fingers over his scalp repeatedly. He shuddered closer to her, even as he felt sick at how comforting this was. How she could still cure him at the drop of a hat, settle his feelings with one touch. It wasn’t fair that she could still do this to him.

Nothing about this was fair.

“I went back.” Joel jerked in her arms, and she stopped the moment of her hand, even as she left it against his head. “I saw that you had – that you –” She took a deep breath. “But there were reinforcements there, too. A new group that had come in from Denver. They were trying to rebuild. I watched them for weeks. And then finally…” Her heart hammered against his cheek. “I cut off all my hair. I figured they wouldn’t realize it was me if I did – they all had that description of me. Red hair, can’t miss me. And I – I stayed with them, for a long time. For five years.”

Joel could barely breathe.

“I told them my name was Anna. I kept shaving my head. I worked with them to rebuild the lab. And I watched them. And I waited. And then it happened, Joel – someone else immune – someone came to us.”

Joel hazarded a look at her face. She was staring at the ceiling, her face taut, her brows knit. Her eyes were far away, back in Salt Lake City.

“Her name was Jenna. Once she came, they wouldn’t let her leave.” Ellie blinked quickly, but tears still rolled down the sides of her face, disappearing into her hair. “First it was blood tests. Then biopsies. And then, a month after she arrived, they – they – ” She scrubbed the tears away from her face, then looked down at Joel. She was blazing. “I understand. I understand why you – So I came back. I was half-worried Jackson would have gone under, or that you –” Her voice was too thick to continue; the tears fell freely down her face, but she didn’t take her eyes off him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. And then: “There _are_ others like me. But it turns out, even with them, they still can’t find a fucking vaccine.”

 

They lay on the floor together, exhausted, silent, but not sleeping, until the sky lightened and turned pink. Ellie moved first, shifting under him and sitting up, pulling him with her.

“Maybe we should get some real rest,” she offered. The blue circles under her eyes were nearly black.

She glanced at her old bedroom, just a few yards away, but in the end, she took Joel’s hand and tugged him upstairs, collapsing into his bed, opening her arms for him so he could settle against her again. Her skin was cold, but the sound of her heart, her breathing against his cheek was more than enough to warm him. Far from the initial panic he’d felt upon seeing her again, he never wanted to let her out of his sight ever again – and the way she was clutching him, he guessed she’d decided that she didn’t, either. Something in his chest had settled; he felt less empty, but he felt less full, too.

They dozed until the late afternoon. Harsh sunlight was slanting through Joel’s bedroom window when Ellie stretched and yawned, jostling him. Her stomach growled as she did so.

“Hungry?” Joel asked. His voice was hoarse from lack of use.

“Starving,” she responded. His lips quirked up into a smile at that: another old rhythm found again.

In the kitchen, he pulled a few battered packets of instant oatmeal out of a mostly empty cupboard, then put a kettle of water on the stove. Ellie watched him from the doorway, her arms crossed as she studied him.

“You should eat more,” she said after a while.

Joel looked down at himself, the way his flannel shirt hung from his thinner frame, and shook his head.

“Speak for yourself,” he said, turning the stove off.

He mixed the oatmeal into two bowls, stuck spoons into the food, and handed her a bowl. They ate standing, a few feet apart. Before long, Ellie was running her fingers around the inside of her bowl, licking the dregs up. Joel put his dishes in the sink, his stomach flopping painfully as he worked up the courage to ask:

“Are you stayin’?” His voice was thicker than he wanted it to be.

Ellie froze. “What?”

“Are you stayin’?” he repeated, leaning against the counter and looking at her feet.

“Here? In the house? Or in Jackson?”

Joel snorted, his heart sinking in his chest. That she hadn’t said yes right away told him enough. “Both.”

She wrapped both of her slim hands around her bowl. Her knuckles were white. “I don’t know,” she said.

He turned away, bracing his hands on either side of the sink. His oatmeal began working its way back up, and when he swallowed he tasted bile. He should have known she wouldn’t stay.

“I want to, I think,” Ellie said quickly, taking a few steps toward him. “But I’m not sure there’s a place for me here. Five years ago, it didn’t feel like it.” She put a hand on Joel’s shoulder, but he shrugged her off.

“But there was one,” he spat, still not looking at her. “There was a place. Right here. Right in this house.”

“Joel --” Her voice was small, and suddenly, she was fifteen again, the girl he’d known just before she left.

“And you knew that,” he went on, gripping the sharp edges of the counter so hard he felt it to his bones. “You knew you’d always have a place here. I wasn’t -- I can’t --” He pushed himself away from the sink and paced the room, his hands knotted tight behind him. Finally, he turned to her. She was pale, a line between her eyebrows. “For someone who was so eager to not be dumped on my baby brother, you sure left in a damn hurry.”

Ellie’s throat move as she swallowed. Her lips parted, her eyes widened and watered as if he’d just hit her. He might as well have. Everything in him felt like it was on fire.

He walked over to the back door and opened it.

“Where are you going?” she asked, sounding strangled.

“Leavin’,” he grunted, slamming the door. He knew exactly where he was going.

 

Esther poured hot water into two mugs of chickory, then set one in front of Joel, who had been sitting at her dining table in silence for a full fifteen minutes. Esther didn’t comment on this; she never said anything if she didn’t have to, and this was why, in spite of everything, they liked each other. Their fast friendship was one of the few things that had kept Joel afloat over the past five years.

Now, Esther settled herself across from him and said, “So. She’s back.”

“Word travels fast,” Joel groused, pulling his cup closer to him and hovering over the steam.

“Is she --”

“She don’t know,” Joel said bitterly.

“Do you want her to?”

Joel flicked his eyes up at her, then back to his mug. He always wondered if her dark eyes could see everything; he was pretty sure they could see through walls and bones and into rooms and hearts. They always could with him.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. _It won’t fix everything. It won’t be the same. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if she’ll want to._ He looked at Esther again, and she was nodding, like she could read his mind.

“And she’s an adult now,” Esther murmured, adding on to his train of thought.

“She is. Still can’t believe it.” Joel took a large gulp of coffee.

Esther gave him a small smile. “You should. You’ll have to.”

“I know.”

“You’re gonna have to talk to her.”

“I know that, too.” He sighed.

“She wouldn’t have come back if she doesn’t care about you,” Esther said. “She could have gone anywhere. She was five years out from this life. Somethin’ made her come back. Only thing I can think of is you.”

Joel grunted. As usual, Esther was right.

Esther stood from the table and rummaged in a cabinet. When she came back, she set a heavy glass bottle down in front of him. It was full of amber liquid.

“For your coffee,” she explained. “I think you’ll need a little courage before you head back home.”

 

As soon as he opened the door, he heard it: soft twanging that curled its way out of Ellie’s room and across the dark house.

_Ellie’s room._ She was still here. 

In spite of himself, the tightness he hadn’t noticed in his chest eased immediately. He took a deep breath, then walked across the living room to Ellie’s door, which was ajar. Inside, he saw her sitting on her bed, his guitar across her lap, lit golden by the lantern burning on her bedside table. He watched for a moment as her small hands picked out a broken tune, which she was humming under her breath. It took him a few minutes to recognize it, but when he did, his body flooded with cold.

_Our future days_ , he remembered, grimacing. Well, so much for that. He could scarcely believe she’d even bothered to remember it.

He rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb, making her jump.

“You’re back,” she said, hugging the guitar to her chest. The light played over her sharp cheekbones, casting shadows in the hollows of her face, making her look otherworldly. Beautiful. Joel’s heart ached. When had she become a woman? Maybe part of her always had been.

Joel nodded, walking over to sit on the edge of the bed. He frowned at the dust that rose up when he did; he hadn’t been in here since she’d left. Everything was exactly as it was, albeit dusty and faded now.

“Went to see a friend,” he said.

Ellie raised her eyebrows, a small, nervous smile playing around the edges of her lips. “A friend, huh?” she said, her tone lilting.

Joel snorted. “Not that kind of friend. You remember Esther?”

Ellie nodded, watching him.

Joel held a hand out for the guitar, which Ellie gave him. It, too, was dusty, but he strummed a few chords anyway. “You remembered this, too,” he noted.

“Of course I did,” Ellie whispered. “How could I not? No one’s ever...” She bit her lip.

“What?” Joel prompted her, putting a hand across the strings to quiet them.

“Nothing,” she murmured. Then, “Everything. I don’t know. No one’s ever cared about me the way you do. Not my mom, not Marlene, not --“ She cleared her throat. “It’s kind of scary,” she admitted, laughing a little.

Joel didn’t laugh, just looked down at the frets and played his fingers over them. “Yeah,” he said simply.

There was a silence. Then, Ellie said, “For a while, I thought I was supposed to die.”

Joel froze. “Ellie,” he said, his voice strained.

“No,” Ellie said sharply. Her eyes were bright, her mouth a firm line. “No, I get to talk now. You’ve already -- you’ve said enough.”

Joel swallowed. He knew she wasn’t just referring to his afternoon outburst.

Ellie exhaled loudly, closing her eyes before she looked at him again. “I thought I was supposed to die. I was this -- this completely insignificant little kid from a failing QZ, and my entire life I’d been in trouble. I’d been told I wasn’t going to be goddamn anything. So when -- when it happened, when Marlene told me I could be the cure -- god, I wanted to be.”

Tears were leaking out of the corners of her eyes, and Joel wanted nothing more than to reach out and wipe them away. His fingers flexed, but he didn’t move toward her; this was important. She had to talk. 

“And for a while there I thought, hey, maybe they’d do some bloodwork,” Ellie went on. “A little prick, that would be it. And you -- being with you --” She choked out a small, harsh laugh, which only made her eyes spill over more. “I thought -- Jackson -- I would have a home. I _did_ have a home. No matter where we were. Do you understand?”

Joel nodded, numb as he listened, his eyes on the guitar.

“And then it’d be over,” she continued. “I’d be done. _We_ would be done. And I would be --” She flapped her hands as she searched for the word. “ _Useful_ , I don’t know.” She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her elbows on them, running her hands through her short hair. “And it would mean that everyone -- all those -- they’d mean something. That they didn’t all die for me to just -- fail.” She ground her palms into her eyes, and they came away wet. “When I realized what you’d done --” She gave a derisive little laugh. It didn’t suit her. “ _Endure and survive._ I couldn’t just do that anymore. But now -- it doesn’t mean anything again, does it? My life.”

Joel’s hands clenched, but when he opened his mouth to protest, she cut him off again.

“Except for you!” she said, the words coming out garbled through her tears. She was choking back sobs. “Joel, you -- fuck, I _need_ you to understand. This whole time I’ve been caught between -- between Riley, and Tess, and Sam, and Marlene -- and fucking _you_! I’ve never -- when I left I -- I didn’t know if you’d -- if you’d --” 

She was sobbing in earnest now. Joel gently lay the guitar on the floor, then shifted over on the bed. Ellie fell against his chest, his skin heating as her tears soaked through his shirt. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. She was so tiny, like a bird, but so strong. That old instinct rose in him again. _Protect her. Fight for her. Teach her._ But what more could he do now? She’d already been through hell and back, multiple times. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. He’d taught her everything he knew, and that was the only reason she was here now, in his arms.

“Ellie,” he murmured into her hair, shushing her. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

“You might not have been!” she wailed. “When I was here, all I was thinking about was _them_ , and when I left, all I could think about was you! You could have -- _Joel_...”

He held her until she quieted, resting his chin on the top of her head.

“After Jenna, I just wanted to come home,” she murmured into his chest. “I needed to. I needed _you_.”

Joel’s heart thudded in his chest, hammering a beat to spell out all the words he wanted to say but couldn’t. Fuck, he’d never been good at words. It had always been Ellie. Ellie and her books, her speeches, her phrases that had kept him alive, kept him going. Ellie and her stupid jokes, her bright smiles. Ellie and her tears, her worries, her vulnerability. Ellie and her strength, her sharp wits, her openness.

His heartbeat, always. Even after all this time.

_Ellie. Ellie. Ellie._

God, how could he tell her? It was his stupid words -- his stupid fucking lack of words -- that had driven her away in the first place.

So he just held her tighter, and she buried her face in his neck, and it felt like home.

 

He startled awake. Outside, it was still dark, though the sky was turning from black to the dark blue of early morning. Ellie was asleep on his chest, but when he looked down at her, her eyelids fluttered, and her eyes were bright despite the hour.

“Ellie,” he murmured, and he felt like his whole heart was behind the word.

She reached up, tracing his jawline with light fingers. _God, what are you thinkin’?_

“Joel?”

“Mm?”

Her voice was nearly a whisper. “When you took me out of that hospital -- why did you do it?”

His breath caught in his chest. Here it was. The question he’d been dreading for five years now.

“The truth,” she added, firmer now. “Please, Joel.”

He took her hand and gently pulled it away from his face, clutching the thin fingers.

Because after all he’d been through, after all he’d lost -- she was the beginning and the end. She was it. She was all he had left. 

“Because I couldn’t live without you,” he said simply, willing himself to hold her gaze. He willed her to understand. He had no words left. He never had. Nothing could explain this, _nothing_.

Ellie bit her lip gently, her eyes clouded. Then, in one fluid movement, she propped herself up on an elbow and pressed her lips against his.

Joel stiffened. Every alarm bell in his head went off, but even so, his lips moved against hers, soft against his skin, and when she slipped her tongue into his mouth, he couldn’t help but feel that this was _right_ , that everything he’d been through had led him to this moment.

_Ellie_.

When she pulled away, she was breathless. Uncertainty danced around her eyes, combined with naked longing. She she began to move closer again, hesitant, Joel pressed his hand into her back, stilling her.

“You don’t have to --” he began.

“Yes,” she said fervently, “I do.”

She slid closer again, but Joel shook his head.

“Do you not --” she began.

“No, I --” Joel took a deep breath. “I don’t want this to be -- _fuck_ , you’re so damn _young_.”

“Too young,” she said, disappointed, moving away from him. He caught her again by the arm around her back.

“I’m too _old_ ,” he corrected her. “And too -- too _fucked up_ , Ellie, you deserve --”

She snatched the hand he was holding out of his grip and thumped on his chest.

“Fuck you,” she said ferociously. Her eyes were sharp in the dawn light now coming through his window. “You don’t get to tell me what I want. You of all people, Joel. When I was in Utah, I thought of you every day. Every _fucking_ day. I tried not to, I tried --” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “But I couldn’t, okay? I know who you are now. I know what I want. You don’t get to take that away from me.”

He put his hand to her cheek. Her eyes blazed with an intensity equal to the feeling pounding through his chest. She was everything to him. How could he argue with her?

So he didn’t. Instead, he curled his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her in for another kiss. And when her lips moved to his ear, his neck, his chest, he didn’t stop her.

 

Over the past twenty-six years, Joel had had an inordinately long time to think about his own mortality.

He’d first thought about it nearly a week after the outbreak, after his birthday, after...

That first time, Tommy had had to snatch Joel’s revolver out of his older brother’s hand. Joel had been pointing it at his temple, at the side of his head, under his chin, had been considering how well the barrel might fit in his mouth when Tommy had come along.

Joel thought about it every time he grabbed an infected around the neck, every time a shiv of his sunk into a clicker’s neck, every time a bullet grazed his skin.

He thought about it when he pulled a trigger, when someone else’s head erupted in a splash of blood from a well-placed shot, when Tommy lashed out and left, when Tess pulled his face to hers for the first time, and every time after that.

Joel had lived longer than he had any right to in a world like this. Yes, he thought about dying all the time. Perhaps he didn’t feel his death as sharply as he once did, but still, he felt it, like a bruise that never went away. If he stopped to consider it, he could probably count on one hand the number of moments in which he _hadn’t_ felt like this.

And oh, this was one of them.

 

Afterward, she lay languid in his arms, pale skin colored by the orange sunlight. He skimmed a hand down the soft skin of her side, making her laugh. He’d missed that sound. He pressed a kiss into the top of her head.

_Ellie._

“So,” he said. “Are you stayin’?”

She propped her chin on his chest to look up at him, her fingers tracing patterns along his stomach. She gave him a little half-smile, a blush rising on her cheeks.

“I want to,” she said, her eyes downcast.

“I want you to,” he said.

“It won’t be the same,” she said, her hand stilling on his abdomen, right on top of the twisted scar from their first winter together. It twinged at her touch. “It won’t be like it was before.”

“I know.” He took a deep breath, aching. “And this --” He scratched his bare chest, shaking his head in wonder. “Ellie, I won’t be around forever.”

She closed her eyes. “I know,” she said. “But I...” She opened her eyes again. They were a perfectly clear green. “I came back for you,” she murmured.

“And if you hadn’t found out there was no cure?” he asked. He played idly with her fingers, flexing them, not meeting her gaze now.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I’m here now. If that’s enough for you, it’s enough for me. It’s a start, right?”

He looked back at her. Her eyes were huge, hopeful in a way he hadn’t seen in years, the light in them mirroring the one he felt in his own chest.

He ran his hand over her short hair, then nodded. “It’s a start.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this weeks and weeks ago, but I've been saving it as a sort of swan song to end this current spree of writing TLOU fic. Because I figure this might be a tad controversial, given my OTP for this fandom (which I still stand behind, by the way!) and people's feelings about Joellie generally. I'm not even posting this to my Tumblr because I don't have enough time or energy to deal with whatever rocks may be thrown at me. Also posting this under a separate pseud because it's rather different from my other fics thus far, and a lot closer to the writing style I use when working on my own original stuff (I tend to write literary fiction in my other life).
> 
> I wrote this midway through working on ["Survivors,"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6052228) because there were moments in that story that leaned a little too Joellie for what I wanted to do with it, and clearly I needed to get something out of my system. (By the way, the Esther you see in "Survivors" is a very different incarnation of the Esther I mention here, but both are interpretations of the same Esther mentioned in the _One Night Live_ [epilogue](http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/29/5948073/the-last-of-us-epilogue-joel-ellie).) This is also my take on Neil Druckmann's [interpretation](http://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/the-last-of-us-how-the-games-creator-envisions-its-ending) of the game ending. I don't think Ellie could necessarily stay away from Joel forever, and of course, this story was born.
> 
> As for my feelings on Joellie -- I could really go either way with Joel and Ellie's relationship. I first read it as father-daughter, but after reading a lot of fics for this ship, I can see where people are coming from, putting the two together romantically. The love and the bond between them is so intense that I can really see their relationship evolving in a lot of different ways. I'm still not sure that romance is how I see their relationship growing first and foremost, and I have some other conflicted feelings on the pairing, which I won't get into here, but feel free to ask me in the comments.
> 
> But still. I couldn't _not_ write this. And I can't not think there are universes out there where they're beautiful together, tragic and happy and whatever else.
> 
> Lots of subtext in this story, so feel free to ask me about that too, in the comments, if you want! And thanks for reading. :)


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